


dodging bullets with your broken heart

by perfectpro



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 34 Days Challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 17:06:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7181603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectpro/pseuds/perfectpro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kent belongs back in Juniors. Kent belongs at Rimouski, and on the bus traveling to roadies, and on the ice with Oceanic. Kent does not belong on the front porch of the Haus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dodging bullets with your broken heart

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to go during the 34 Day Challenge for Week 3 (The Samwell Years), but I clearly didn't get up in time. So here it is, a day late!

Jack has his life set up into sections, because that’s the easiest way to look at it. He had Juniors, then rehab, and now Samwell. After Samwell comes the NHL, but for now that’s a few years away and that doesn’t exactly make it easier to think about, but it feels more manageable now than it used to. In rehab, they talked about focusing on the little successes. Being able to think about the NHL without needing to take a pill is a little success for Jack, so he focuses on that.

Some things he carries over from one section to another. He’s trying to carry over the things from rehab into Samwell, for instance. Other things he leaves behind. Like how he went into rehab and they made him leave everything he carried over from Juniors behind.

When Jack split his life into segments, he’d forgotten to consider Kent. It sounds so ridiculous, now, forgetting Kent, but he had, and he hadn’t thought about whether Kent was something that he could carry over. Because they hadn’t seen each other since Juniors, since before rehab, before the next section of Jack’s life that jumped in between Juniors and the NHL that neither of them had seen coming, and talking on the phone isn’t the same thing.

So now, Kent’s in his dorm, glancing through his desk and looking at all of the Samwell memorabilia his parents piled onto him before they left the bookstore, and Jack doesn’t really know what to do. Kent doesn’t look like he belongs here, in this portion of Jack’s life. Jack hasn’t exactly figured out how Samwell is going to go yet, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want a lot of reminders from before.

Hockey excluded, that is. He’s pretty sure he’d go crazy if he wasn’t playing hockey.

“Your dorm room doesn’t even look like yours,” Kent says abruptly, and Jack jolts himself out of whatever reverie he was in, coming back to the present and looking around his dorm.

The walls are blank, excluding the Samwell pennant his mom had put up by his bed. It’s the same furniture that every other freshman has, the plain wooden dresser and desk and chair. His hockey bag is leaning against the bed, which might be the only distinguishing feature. Jack doesn’t want any distinguishing features in his room. He wants to walk in and feel like he could be walking into any room. For the first time in his life, he wants some kind of anonymity.

In Juniors, he’d been Bad Bob’s son, born to be a hockey legend and everything that he did well instead of incredible suddenly meant that he was only mediocre. The other kids on the team were often too involved with his father’s celebrity to remember that Jack didn’t know how to be that, just yet. In rehab, he’d been a spoiled rich kid with a drug problem. The other inpatients had reasons for being suicidal, reasons that weren’t things like being drafted in the NHL, and Jack had felt like an idiot the entire time, nearly killing himself because he’d had it too good.

There’s sure to be some scrutiny at Samwell, yeah, but he can live with that. He’s still playing hockey, so it’s unavoidable. It’s better than how he’d feel if he wasn’t playing hockey, to be sure.

Kent is looking around the room, eying all the blank space. “You at least need a few posters. I’m not saying hang lights, or create a reading nook, or whatever,” he says, not meeting Jack’s eyes.

Jack arches an eyebrow, because okay, if they’re pretending like they don’t care, he can do this. “Reading nook?” he chirps, and Kent shrugs almost angrily.

“My sister has a Pinterest board of dorm ideas, okay?” Kent goes back to looking through the desk drawers. It’s all notebooks and pens, school supplies. Maybe the syllabus from Jack’s introduction history course. It’s nothing Kent would actually be interested in, which means that he’s avoiding looking at Jack on purpose.

Well Kent’s the one who decided to come down here, so Jack doesn’t really know what he’s supposed to do about that. Jack picked up his phone, and Kent said, “I’m downstairs.” And sure enough, when Jack had gotten to the first floor of the dorm, there stood Kent. Like something Jack had left at home that his mom had shipped out to him, Kent had come in and made a place for himself among Jack’s sparse belongings.

Deciding to ignore that Kent checks his sister’s Pinterest, Jack feels the need to get out of his room. More importantly, he feels the need to get Kent out of his room. He grabs his wallet and keys, then nods his head to the door. “There’s a poster sale at the bookstore,” he remembers, and Kent turns to grin at him.

-x-

This summer, Jack packed for a college he hadn’t planned on going to, and Kent won the Stanley Cup. It only bothers him when he thinks about it. Jack’s glad that Kent didn’t wear his ring, but doesn’t know whether Kent did it on purpose or not.

At the bookstore, Jack looks at posters with Kent, and then Kent gets bored and wanders through the books while Jack convinces himself that it would not be a good idea to leave Kent here and walk across campus to the Haus, where the guys wouldn’t bother him about his room so much.

He’s staring at some Ansel Adams prints when Kent knocks their shoulders together, and Jack turns to see Kent holding a copy of _Guns, Germs, and Steel_. It’s not something that Kent would usually touch other than to push it out of the way in Jack’s bag while looking for something else, and Jack’s about to chirp him for finally getting some reading in when Kent shoves it at him.

“I thought of you when I saw it, so I bought it.” Kent pauses, frowns, his cowlick sticking straight up, defiant. “It reminded me of the stuff you used to read on roadies. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Kent could be the kind of guy to propose and tell his fiancé “it doesn’t mean anything.” Jack doesn’t point that out, though, and he also doesn’t mention that he already has a copy of the book. He might have left it at home, though, so it’d be nice to have around. Accepting the book, he points to some posters towards the back that look like they just have slogans on them. If Kent’s willing to extend the olive branch, Jack figures he should at least be willing to try.

In the poster bin, Kent flips through all of the annoying ones in cursive fonts, waving Jack off when he tries to help. Jack looks at a pile that seem to be a little more subdued, not a lot of background, and most of them are different variations on Nike’s _Just Do It_ slogan, so he’s about to stop looking when he flips one more and stops. It certainly wouldn’t count as decorative, but decorations are subjective.

Stopping his own search, Kent peers over and scoffs a little. “Jack, that poster is the opposite of motivational. It makes me feel unmotivated,” he complains, but Jack doesn’t move on to the next one. Not yet.

“I kind of like it,” Jack confesses, and Kent scoffs again, but it’s quieter this time. A little sadder.

Bold, black letters on a plain white background read _Be Better_. Jack picks it up and adds it to the pile, which is currently just a planner and a whiteboard he figures he can work out plays on. Kent doesn’t say anything, and maybe his silence instead of his approval is supposed to make a difference to Jack when it always has before, but Jack isn’t Kent’s to approve of anymore. And if he has to buy a poster to prove it, so be it.

-x-

They’re heading back to the dorm to put the stuff down, and when Jack hears someone yell “Jay-Z” from across the quad, he winces. Because having Kent here is one things, just him being in Samwell, but as soon as he meets someone from Samwell, Kent will become unalterably mixed within Jack’s experiences. He can just be boxed away, and Jack wants to be able to put Kent in a box, writer _return to sender_ on the label and send him back to Vegas.

Kent doesn’t seem to hear it, but stops when he’s noticed that Jack’s stopped. “What are you waiting for?” he asks, and then he opens in mouth in awe. “Jay-Z, oh that’s great, Zimms,” he exclaims, turning around to find who yelled it.

It only takes a moment for Shitty to appear, and Jack really doesn’t want to be here. Kent can’t just decide to involve himself Jack’s life like this, it’s not fair and it’s too much. They could talk on the phone occasionally, that’s one thing, because Jack’s in Juniors when he’s on the line and Samwell when he’s off, and there’s still some sense of a division between the two.

Now, though, now Kent’s breaking up the divide, and Jack stands between him and Shitty and wishes for the ground to open up and swallow him whole. “Shitty, hey,” he says, weakly.

Shitty claps him on the back and then turns to Kent, and oh God, of course he’s going to recognize Kent. Kent won the Stanley Cup this summer as captain of the Las Vegas Aces; the entire hockey team knows his face.

“Kent Parson,” Kent introduces himself, and Jack doesn’t know whether he’s being modest or doing it for Jack’s sake, but either way he’s a little bit grateful.

“Dude, nice to meet you. I’m Shitty,” Shitty says, booming and friendly as ever.

Jack still doesn’t know how Shitty decided to latch onto him, but Shitty is becoming Samwell’s Kent in the way that Kent was Junior’s Shitty.

Kent squints, and recently Jack has genuinely forgotten that shitty is a curse word. “Dude, don’t put yourself down right off the bat,” Kent starts, and Jack laughs, but it comes out weakly, and he’s sure that they can tell.

Shitty explains it’s a nickname and tells Kent his majors, and Jack tries pointedly to communicate to Kent that they have to be going without actually saying anything. Kent isn’t looking at him, though, so he’s not sure he gets the message across. It’s not until he hears Shitty invite Kent back to the Haus that Jack realizes that he does need to intervene.

“Yeah, that sounds great. Jack didn’t say you had a hockey frat house; that is the coolest thing,” Kent agrees, and Jack tries to come up with the first excuse that will get them out of this, but he can’t think of anything quick enough.

“I think most everyone’s gone because of the long weekend right now, but you can see it,” Shitty says, and Jack totally forgot that they have Monday off, but they do have Monday off, and most of the hockey players went home for the weekend, and things are actually starting to look up.

-x-

Kent belongs firmly back in Juniors. Kent belongs at Rimouski, and on the bus traveling to roadies, and on the ice with Oceanic. Kent does not belong on the front porch of the Haus. Jack feels sick just looking at him, because Samwell was supposed to be his. To become his own person, to figure out how to deal with his anxiety, to give himself some more time before the NHL, whatever it is was, it was always supposed to be his, and Parse can’t just drop by one day and become a part of it.

“This place is a dump,” Kent declares, but he sounds like he doesn’t care.

“Isn’t she a beaut?” Shitty agrees, looking up at the reading room and grinning. “Sorry you aren’t here for a kegster, man, that’d be sick. We throw these giant parties, huge blowouts.”

Nodding, Kent hops up a few steps and glances at the cooler on the porch, forgotten from the last kegster. A lone can of Natty lies on its side amidst a puddle of water. “Huge blowouts, huh?” he asks, eyes sliding over the yard and then cutting to Jack.

Jack suddenly remembers all the parties he and Kent went to, the countless number of times that Kent sat on the edge of the tub while Jack threw up in the toilet, trying sooth him with a hand running gently through Jack’s hair. All the times that they went when Jack didn’t know his limits, and all the times that they went and he knew but didn’t care, draining anything that ended up in his cup.

Mostly, he remembers the morning hangovers, waking up to sunshine splaying over him in his or Kent’s bed, Kent’s eyes watching him warily as he handed Jack a bottle of Gatorade and some Advil, mentioning maybe he should take it a little easier next time. Jack remembers rolling his eyes and disregarding the advice, because it was the only way he knew how to let go.

Shitty is in the middle of telling the story of his first kegster, or what he remembers from it. “And Jack woke me up with a broomstick because I’d fallen asleep in the tree, over there,” he says, pointing to the tree to the side of the Haus.

“Well, you were naked and it was almost dawn, people were going to be around and I didn’t want you flashing them,” Jack defends himself.

Jack knows what’s coming before Kent even opens his mouth. “Why were you up at dawn, Jack?” he inquires, and there’s a double meaning behind the question, and Jack is too tired to pretend that he doesn’t understand.

“I was going to Faber, the rink,” Jack answers. He watches Kent cycle through that, realize that he must have been sober. The surprise on Kent’s face hurts a little, but Jack remembers enough of Juniors to know there are plenty of nights that he doesn’t remember, and Kent was there for all of that. Kent has a reason to be surprised, Jack tells himself. It still hurts. Just a little.

The conversation comes to a halt, and Shitty’s telling some story that Jack too thankful for to pay attention to, because at least it might distract Kent from how weird Jack is about all of this. And Jack knows he doesn’t really have a really to be weird, he and Kent talk to each other semi-regularly, texts after Kent’s games and occasional calls, so it’s not like they have a problem talking to each other usually.

It’s just that Kent shouldn’t be here, and it’s like Jack’s the only one who notices it.

“Jack and I used to be the beer pong champs, back in the Q,” Kent says, and that was a long time ago.

Shitty doesn’t even miss a beat, and Jack is so thankful for him, for this guy who found him and decided they were going to be friends. “Well, Jack seems to have lost those skills recently. I won’t make you lose with him, though, so if you come back, you can be my partner,” he suggests, easily. “We can be the champs, provided you haven’t lost your touch.”

There’s a beat, and Jack says, “I don’t drink anymore,” which should be obvious, considering that he went to rehab. At least, he doesn’t drink at kegsters, which remind him so much of the parties at Juniors that he’s afraid he’d be tempted to overdo it in the same way. It’s too much, risking his sobriety like that.

For a moment, Kent pauses, and Jack almost expects him to say something like “I’ll drink yours for you” like he would when Jack had too much already and the party wasn’t even in full swing. “Well, Shitty just volunteered to be my partner, so you can stand back at watch,” Kent answers, and then turns to Shitty. “Believe me, I haven’t lost my touch.”

It reminds Jack of how Kent had handed him _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ , saying “it doesn’t mean anything” with a roll of his eyes. This is Kent trying, actively trying to be a good friend. It makes Jack think of all the times they roomed together on roadies and Kent gave him the bed by the window.

-x-

In rehab, when they talked about addiction, they talked about the people their addiction had hurt. Jack’s answers were fairly obvious, he felt. His parents, his coaches, his team. If he’d been sober, he would have played better, and he let the team down every time he took pills before the games. The same with his coaches, really.

His addition hurt his parents because he couldn’t trust them. Jack remembers the shattered look his mother had given him while he was in the hospital, remembers how his father had told him he was going into rehab and not the NHL in the fall and Jack had sat there, too weak to protest, too scared of himself to do anything. It was the first time he’d been able to recognize himself as an addict.

The psychiatrist has stared him down from across the table and asked if those were really the only things that his addiction had hurt.

 _You went through so much, and those are the only people you hurt?_ she'd asked, and Jack thought about how gently his mother touches him now, as though he might shatter if she presses too hard. How his did isn’t even brave enough to touch him anymore.

 _Yes,_ he answered, sure of it.

She had glanced down at a chart and then looked at him with pursed lips. _Your friend found you in the bathroom. He’s the one that called for the ambulance. You don’t think that you hurt him,_ she’d stated, and Jack had sat, ramrod straight, and looked down at the carpet.

Until then, he hadn’t thought about Kent in relation to his addiction. Kent knew about it, about some of it, not the full extent. He knew that Jack liked to drink too much at parties, but they were teenagers living at the top of the world; drinking too much as almost expected of them. He knew that Jack took anxiety meds, sure, but those were prescribed; someone had to have been keeping track of how often he got the prescription refilled.

Kent about the drinking and the pills, but he didn’t know Jack had never kissed him sober. Across from his psychiatrist, Jack thought about it, about whether it would feel better or worse. If he’d even be able to notice.

Jacked wanted to pull his knees up to his chest just for something to hold onto. _I didn’t mean to hurt him,_ he whispered, and the eyes across the table softened a little.

 

There isn’t a lot to show around the Haus, thankfully (there’s only so much time they can spend staring a kitchen cabinet full of Sriracha sauce), so the tour finishes pretty quickly. Shitty has to go to a study group, so he heads off, yelling something about them getting dinner together in the dining hall. Which leaves Jack and Kent along, walking back towards the dorms.

“Your friend is a trip,” Kent says, as though realizing there was a silence he needed to cover up.

It describes Shitty fairly well, in all honesty. “Yeah,” Jack agrees. Sometimes, Shitty reminds him of Kent, in that Jack never really had in say in becoming friends with them, it just happened and he was suddenly along for the ride.

Kent looks around the quad as they pass through it. “So where to now? You’ve got to show me all the secrets of college life, Zimms, I’m going to live vicariously through you,” he proclaims, slinging an arm around Jack’s middle where it sits next to the stone fist of his stomach, which tightens. “Is it as wild as the movies?”

Nothing is as wild as the movies, and Kent already knows that. “It’s mostly studying, believe it or not. I’ve got a lot of papers, usually,” Jack explains, feeling like he should have better stories to tell. He’s only been here a month, though, and it really is mostly work. And hockey practice, and occasionally going to kegsters with Shitty to make sure he gets home okay (after the first one with the tree incident, Jack’s decided that if Shitty’s going to look out for him, he’s also going to look out for Shitty).

Kent gives an eye roll, which Jack could have predicted if asked, and then he says, “If you take me to the library to show me books, I swear to God.” He doesn’t finish the sentence, just keeps on walking. “Hey, where’s the rink? You can show me that.”

They’re walking south to the dorms and the rink is north, so Jack turns around and then Kent tugs him back. “I brought skates, I just left them in your room. Let’s play some one on one, yeah?” he asks, and he looks just like in Juniors, and Jack’s always been bad at telling Kent no.

“Sure,” Jack agrees, and they grab Kent’s skates and walk back to the rink. No one’s on the ice, which is great. Sometimes other people come in to practice, and Jack once spent a few hours on one side of the rink while the curling club used the other. He’s glad no one else is here, though. He’s accepted Kent coming to Samwell unannounced, but he’d like to keep the incident as isolated as possible.

In the locker room, Jack gets his skates on, grabs sticks for the both of them and snags a puck on the way out. It’s just one on one with Kenny, the same thing they’ve done a million times before after practices and in Jack’s backyard. And it’s not the backdrop that gives away they’re not in the Q anymore, it’s how Kent plays.

Because Jack’s been playing NCAA for a little over a month, and before this he was coaching peewee and doing drills in his backyard. Kent’s the youngest captain to ever lift the Stanley Cup, and he plays like it.

Jack gets ahold of himself after Kent’s first goal. It’s just Kent, and they’ve done this a million times before, and he’s going to pull himself together and play well. He steels the puck, racing up the ice with Kent on his heels, sending it skidding across the ice and towards the goal just as Kent goes in for it, and it hits in and Kent just smiles as laughs, taking it back up for them to do another faceoff with.

Kent’s faster, and his slap shot has more power, and Jack wonders how he ever could have thought Kent would have played the same way they did for so many years. They pushed each other, sure, but Kent has an entire league of people pushing him now, and it’s no wonder that he plays the way he does. He skates up the ice and Jack is suddenly struck by how much he lost with this detour.

Almost as if he can tell the change in mood, Kent makes a beautiful shot from nearly center ice, the puck hitting the back of the goal with a satisfying sound. He chases it and brings it back, sending it over to Jack in an easy pass. Jack stops the puck to text Shitty they’re at Faber for whenever he finishes up with his study group, and then he and Kent are just passing, easy as anything, skating up the ice like Jack never went to Samwell, like Jack never went to rehab, like Jack didn’t overdose and Kent didn’t find him covered in his own vomit.

“Why are you here, Jack?” Kent asks, and it’s a question that Jack’s actually prepared to answer.

It’s the same question everyone’s been asking him since he came to Samwell. “College is going to be a good experience.” He sends the puck back without thinking.

Kent stops the puck and sends it back, a little more power in the pass then necessary. “Yeah, Jack, and I get that, but why are you here? You can have a good experience anywhere. Don’t give me the same soundbites you give to the media,” he says, because he knows what Jack’s interview voice it, and Kent’s not about to let his best friend use it with him.

“It’s going to be good for me,” Jack emphasizes, wondering whether he could skate a few laps or if Kent would see it as avoiding the question. He might be avoiding the question, sure, but the real question is will Kent notice.

It’s a little better than his last answer, so Kent doesn’t reject it immediately. “I thought that coaching peewee was good for you.”

“It was.” Jack liked how carefree the kids were, how one of his players never really got the hang of skates and would wobble around the rink, doing accidental spins. It reminded him of how much he had loved the game at their age, how hockey was the thing he was best at before people starting noticing.

“Well then, why didn’t you do that for another year?” Kent doesn’t sound angry, just frustrated, and Jack thinks that Kent’s one of the only people in his life who is willing to come out and ask these questions. Honestly, Kent’s one of the only people in his life, period.

“I can get a degree like this.” It’s a non-answer, and Jack’s sure that Kent’s going to call him on it when Kent goes to hit the puck and misses, snapping up to look at Jack.

He’s staring at Jack like Jack’s the one who just did something completely uncharacteristic, like miss the puck. “You’re going to stay here? Four years, you in some Ivy prep school. What then? Get a job teaching history at a high school. You can’t do this to yourself, Jack,” he snaps, looking around the rink like he’s going to find something else to be angry about.

Jack waits a moment to see if Kent is going to say anything else. “I’m still going into the NHL.” That’s the plan, at least. “I’m just taking my time getting there.”

Turning to the goal and lining up his shot, Kent says, “You don’t have time. You’re going to have to retire by forty, so you’ll have fifteen years when you graduate? Maybe a little less, and God forbid you get injured. A year, sure, Jack, but you’re going to give up four years of your career. For what, some classes where you get to talk about wars?” His stick and the puck connect with a sound like a gunshot, and the puck sinks into the goal like a magnet pulled it there.

With a steadying breath, Jack skates over and fishes the puck out with his stick. “I can’t go in yet.” That much he’s sure of.

Kent turns to him, and he looks the same he does during a faceoff. Mouth set, eyes defiant, and he’s so sure that this is something that he can win. “Why are you here then?”

“To play hockey,” Jack snaps, passing the puck.

“Bullshit!” Kent yells, pushing out his stick to meet the puck and redirect it to where Jack’s skating to. “If you were here to play hockey, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be in the NHL where you belong,” he says, and he slams the puck across the ice.

Jack stops it, meeting Kent’s eyes, and then he shrugs. “Maybe I don’t know why I’m here, but I am. I’m here, and I’m starting to like it, and this is going to be the next four years of my life, so get used to it or get over it or whatever.” He looks down at the ice. “Now are we going to play hockey or not?”

He almost expects Kent to blow him off, throw the stick down and mutter something about how they can’t until Jack’s in the NHL like Kent wants him to be. Kent surprises him, though, straightening his posture and taking a breath before nodding. “Let’s play hockey.”

 

Dinner is a tense affair, and even after several Parse and Zimms one timers on the ice, Kent is still looking at Jack like he doesn’t know what to do with him. Well, Jack doesn’t really know what to do with Kent either, so at least they’re even.

Shitty eats with them, and Jack wishes they he and Kent weren’t like this so that Shitty didn’t have to cover up the painful awkward silences. Actually, there are less than Jack thought there would be, because Kent seems fine. He’s doing what he used to do at parties back in Juniors, covering for Jack’s hatred of almost all social situations by talking to the other person as much as he can.

Kent and Shitty talk about hockey briefly, and Kent mentions Vegas offhand in a few ways, and Jack doesn’t know why he’s surprised. He knew Kent lived in Vegas, obviously, and he watched Kent play the season and win the Cup, but he’s still caught off guard by the realization that Kent has a life without him now.

Jack wonders if he were to visit Kent out in Vegas, if he would feel as out of place there as Kent does at Samwell. It’s not a comforting thought.

He’s maybe a little rude, probably more than he realizes, but he doesn’t add to the stories when Kent tries to reminisce about Juniors. Some of it is because he doesn’t remember those stories, but that doesn’t make them not true. He doesn’t joke about how their old goalie for Oceanic would wear his skates to bed the night before a game, and he doesn’t laugh when Kent talks about the hotel room their team trashed when a game of Super Mario Bros had gotten completely out of control.

In turn, Shitty mentions things from Andover, and he talks about the Mario Party Championship that they played at the Haus last week. Johnson, their goalie won, and said, “I’m surprised this is a momentous enough of an occasion for you to mention it.” And then he’d thought about it and continued, “I guess you don’t have a ton of other stories from Samwell just yet, though. I’m happy to help.”

That launches Shitty and Kent talking about weird goalie traditions while Jack stabs at the lump of Jell-O on his plate. He doesn’t know why he got it, he doesn’t like Jell-O anyway. And then he remembers that he and Kent would always trade back when they were in the Q. Jack would give Kent the Jell-O and Kent would give Jack his roll.

Without really thinking about it, Jack passes the Jell-O over to Kent’s plate, and then he gets up to grab a roll. When he comes back, there’s another on his plate already, and Kent is far more engaged in the conversation than he needs to be.

 

Shitty heads out, and he meets Jack’s gaze for a long moment before waving and going off to do something that Jack will hear about tomorrow. And he does enjoy Shitty’s company, but Jack’s glad to see him go if it means that there’s one less thing from Samwell looking into what’s inside the Juniors box.

It’s getting late, well, not particularly. It’s half past eight, and Jack doesn’t know how long Kent was planning on staying, but he didn’t bring an overnight bag, which is a good sign. It’s an even better one when Kent looks around at the quad and starts walking to Jack’s dorm. “I’ve got to get going, I told Ashley I’d drive her back from MIT, so, yeah,” he says, picking up his head and shaking his hair out.

“MIT?” Jack asks. Kent’s sister is three or four years younger than Kent, and Kent just turned twenty… She’s seventeen now, she must be if she’s looking into colleges, and he blinks. He mostly remembers Ashley at their games in Oceanic when she and Kent’s mother could make them, blonde and freckles like Kent, a blur in the stands as she cheered for them. She would have been fourteen then, he realizes. It’s strange to realize how much time has passed.

Kent nods, eyebrows in his hairline. “Right? She was there touring and talking with the head of some department today. She’s been so annoying about college applications, I swear.” He covers his pride a little by rolling his eyes, but Jack can still see how happy Kent is for his sister.

“Wow.” Ashley’s in her senior year in high school now, which means she’ll only be a year behind Jack in school. A little weird to think about, but he’s getting there. “Yeah, okay, say hi to her for me.”

Grabbing the skates he’s left on Jack’s floor, Kent gets them into his bag and glances around to make sure he’s not leaving anything behind. Jack feels a strange impulse to tell Kent he’s sorry, but he doesn’t know what he’s sorry for, and he doesn’t say anything. Mostly, Jack’s just relieved that Kent will be going away, out of Samwell, and Jack can put him back in Juniors again. Maybe he can be the first thing that Jack carries over to the NHL, but mostly he just knows that Kent doesn’t belong here, in his dorm room, glancing at his things.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to carry Kent over from Juniors to Samwell, it’s that he doesn’t know how. There are too many loose ends between them, too much left unsaid that Kent still wants to say and Jack’s tired of hearing. Hell, maybe Kent should be his own box, but then he would still try to mix in, and it’s too much effort to untangle him from everything.

Jack walks with Kent down the stairs, looks at Kent’s rental car that’s glaringly obvious on a college campus, even one where most people are well off. Kent’s talking about him coming to New York for Thanksgiving. “The American one,” Kent clarifies, fishing in his pocket for his keys. “My mom would love to have you; you know that,” he says, and then tacks on, “it would be fun.”

“I’ll see how much time off I have,” Jack lies. He likes Kent’s mom, but he doesn’t know that he wants to spend Thanksgiving with the Parson family. It sounds like it would just be too much. Kent would be starting the season, so he’d talk about hockey, which means Jack would have to talk about hockey, and Jack would rather use his Thanksgiving break to sleep in and get some time on the ice alone. He feels bad all the same, even as he remembers that he’s allowed to want to do things for himself. Sometimes, it just feels like he’s doing everything for himself.

Kent nods in affirmation, and then they’re standing around, forced to get to the goodbye. “You should come visit me some time,” he mentions, before clarifying, “not just for Thanksgiving. Come visit me in Vegas.” He watches Jack pause in apprehension. “There are things to do there besides drink. I know a few good mini golf courses.”

Cracking a smile, Jack laughs even as he knows that he’s not going to visit Kent in Vegas. He doesn’t know who either of them are fooling, because they’ve always been able to read each other. He doesn’t know why either of them are bothering to write in between the lines.

“Okay then. I’ll see you,” Kent says, and Jack nods, and then. And then.

“I’ll see you, Kenny.” Jack remembers, almost violently, the first time he realized he’d never kissed Kent sober.

Kent looks sad, mostly wistful, like he’s thinking that they should have said goodbye in Jack’s dorm room.

They nod at each other, as though acknowledging the other’s feelings. Even though it’s nine at night, with crappy lights in the parking so no one would be able to tell who either of them are, Jack doesn’t go for it. Kent’s the youngest captain in the NHL right now, and it doesn’t matter that no one on campus other than the hockey team could pick him out of a lineup in broad daylight. It’s too much to risk.

When Kent is gone, when Jack can’t hear the pop music blaring through the windows as Kent speeds down the road, Jack goes back up to his room. The stuff they bought at the bookstore is still on his desk, and he takes it out to put it up. When he hangs the poster in front of his bed, so the first thing he sees every morning is _Be Better_ , Jack wonders if the other thing he carried over Juniors is one step forward, two steps back.


End file.
